Kim Newman

It's an intelligent, well-written, excellently played movie, with top flight gore/horror effects, perverse humour and a provocatively bleak vision. Also, it has the world's first true zombie hero in Bub, who listens to Beethoven and eats people.

Top-flight muscleman entertainment that is not afraid to have a brain or two in its head.

A worthy — if chilly and difficult — addition to the sadly extensive filmography of American mass murder. The soundtrack from Canadian singer-songwriter Maica Armata adds some much-needed heart.

Nothing is taken seriously, and there’s a nice mix of old groaner jokes delivered with a visible wince and genuine, sneakily erudite wit.

And then, of course, there was the music, better music than any film had had for many years.

The filmmakers try to solve the problem of turning an experience which merely consists of a series of fights into a story by... ignoring it, presenting a film which merely consists of a series of fights.

After the fizzle of the later Roger Moore Bonds, The Living Daylights brings in a new 007 in Timothy Dalton, who manages the Connery trick of seeming suave and tough at the same time, and tried to get away from the weak comedy in favour of proper international intrigue.

In 1956 audiences flocked to The Searchers precisely because it was a John Wayne western, and lapped up its mix of Injun-fightin' action, rough comic knockabout and intense, emotional storyline. Seen now, it is all that and much, much more.

Very of its time but enjoyable for all that.

Like 2001, Star Wars and Jurassic Park, it ups the special effects stakes and gets closer to putting on screen the images you've had in your mind while reading epic sci-fi.

Average example of MadMaxploitation.

This Neil Simon-scripted pastiche of an array of much-loved detective characters is surprisingly charming.

Well-acted, it lacks the standout performances or star presences which propelled the tonally-similar Ex Machina to more than cult success. While it will play to fans of cerebral science fiction, it may be less grabby for general audiences.

The effects, arguably the best of the year, only add to the thrill.

This subject demands a Godfather Part II, but Stone and collaborators have turned in a Godfather Part III. There is a lot of good material, but LaBeouf nearly sinks it and we could use much more of the old Gekko brimstone.

A notable, unusual existential thriller that is psychologically acute without the need for Oscar-clip self-pitying speeches, it’s also terrifically suspenseful with a provocative punchline.

Okay, so it’s Cujo with a chimp and a pool instead of a dog and a car – but Primate delivers good, gruesome business and has a sense of fun. Solid horror hokum.

Like all sieges, this offers moments of choppy terror and excitement followed by dull sit-it-out-and-starve spots. Straddled between uproarious schoolboy tosh and serious historical movie, this still offers enough dismemberments, royal tantrums and portcullis-rammings to make for a lively Saturday night out.

It’s an entertaining, engaging, colourful picture in its own right with decently-handled action-adventure set-pieces and sly comedy, detouring from the expected thrills and spills into body-hopping comedy drama.

Grotesque rather than scary and severely underplotted – but certainly strong meat.

Affleck and Bernthal make a funny, if morally dubious, double act, as Christian’s autism lets sociopathic hit man Brax think of himself as the ‘normal’ brother. Best bit: the line-dancing scene.

The execution doesn't quite enliven the premise, but there's still enough enjoyably offbeat moments here to make this one worth digging up.

While the film stumbles and meanders, however, there’s no denying that it delivers enough set-pieces for three regular horror films.

Director Dennis Hopper continues the fumbling manner of "Colors" and the forthcoming-but-disowned "Catchfire," drawing out what ought to be a 72 minute B-picture into two hours and ten minutes of sweaty silliness with three pretty stars who can't quite bring themselves to be camp enough for the material.

Class Action, which becomes unbearable whenever the lead characters talk about their relationship, has precisely two and a half things going for it, the half being Mastrantonio's Italian grin.

Many will find Kansas City unbearable, because Leigh (with a mouth full of jagged teeth and a permanent snarl) and Richardson (who totters along in a druggy stupour), give brilliant performances as extremely unpleasant characters. Furthermore, the ending is a real slap-in-the-face downer. But if you can get past that, this is the real stuff.

The epitome of middle-brow 'quality' drama -- admirable within its limitations, but Bernard Schlink's Oprah Winfrey Book Club-approved book wasn't exactly literature, as this isn't exactly cinema.

A demented slice of widescreen right-on action-funk from the blaxsploitation era.

It's nothing wildly original, but it is pacey and entertaining when it gets going.

As with "The Dark Knight," the only real caveat is that while it's exciting and imaginative, it's not exactly anyone's idea of fun. To keep in the game, perhaps the next movie could let the hero enjoy himself a bit more.

It’s the sort of picture you'll either queue all night in the rain to see twelve times or avoid like a Wayans Brothers Retrospective for the rest of life.

By no means a conventional horror film, yet several degrees more twisted and gruesome than the average indie relationships drama, this is likely to appeal to more adventurous cult film fans.

Splendid landscapes and interesting faces - the usual virtues of the Western - keep the film burbling along, even as the actual plot is falling apart.

A curiously resistable drama, despite several strong elements - the most notable being newcomer Idina Menzel.

Effective jump-shocks and a strong turn from Eddie Marsan mask an over-complicated last act.

If you can take the assault on your senses it’s worth sticking with for a core of genuine, affecting drama and dollops of sly, quotable humour.

A distinctively crass, hugely enjoyable sick satire from director Paul Bartel, working for uber-producer Roger Corman – allegedly, Bartel kept thinking up more and wilder jokes, while Corman insisted more and more people got run over.

Suspenseful and thought-provoking, The Cured is a serious, engaged horror movie. More upsetting than scary, it ratchets up the tension unsettlingly. There’s life in zombies yet.

With such a sprawling and over the top plot, it's hard to remain focused on what's important. Bertolucci is so concerned with the epic quality of the film that he forgets to give it any real substance. Reeves doesn't do himself any favours in his turn as the unconvincing Buddha either.

Adapted from the Stephen King killer car novel, this John Carpenter film is more like an assembly line vehicle than a customised job, but is nevertheless a slick, entertaining piece of work.

Thoughtful trial movie with a disturbing edge.

Fraser on form, 3D dinosaurs, geology lessons, phosphorecent hummingbirds, killer flying fish, theme park rides, Icelandic babe - what's not to like? It skews young, but is everything an 8-12 year-old could want. Older siblings and parents will have nothing to complain about either.

Though overstretched and a trifle ponderous, this is a solidly acceptable star vehicle with more than enough righteous vengeance for an evening of classy thrills.

Funny and scary, this is vintage Polanski.

Brilliantly terrible or terribly terrible depending on your viewpoint.

A grand folly, but lots to love.

Thanks to Rushdie's sensitive handling of his own material, this is an adaptation big in both ideas and heart.

While [Penn] has all the heavyweight America-gone-sour themes and confused characters found in roadside movies like Five Easy Pieces, Electra Glide In Blue or Thieves Like Us, he misses the eccentric and exciting spikiness that made them more than just gloomfests.

Antibirth is intentionally ramshackle and hallucinatory as storytelling, seen through the viewpoint of characters who are mostly too stoned to concentrate – but it’s also highly crafted and unsettling.

Writer-director Gerard Johnson and chameleon-like star Ferdinando continue to impress with their strong collaboration here.

No masterpiece, but a decent rental prospect. Twohy works the Sci-fi genre well yet again.

Though Spike Lee would clearly like this movie to remind you of ills-of-TV satires like A Face In The Crowd and Network (there's a spin on the well-remembered "mad as hell" speech), it comes out as a weird, unsatisfying hybrid of Robert Downey Sr.'s Putney Swope and Mel Brooks's The Producers.

An austere, cerebral reading of a book which is unfettered, blood-bolstered and wildly sensationalist — Lewis is the father of torture porn, not a master of subtle chills. It’s interesting and unsettling, with a charismatic lead performance, but nowhere near as shocking as it should be.

Yayyyy, monsters!

A clever and enjoyable wrapping-up of the time-travelling adventures.

A smart, subversive but rather cold debut from Brandon Cronenberg that's short of the dark wit that lit up his father's early work. Then again, comparisons are hardly fair, especially when Cronenberg Jr. clearly has plenty of ideas of his own.

Unpretentiously and likeable Peter Hyams is one of the few hacks still working at this budget level, and he relishes the chance to make an audience jump, not only with some neat monster effects and a pile of mutilated corpses but also with some subtleties of editing and lighting, plus one of the loudest jump-out-of-your-seat soundtracks in a recent memory.

Though the clumsy geometric tentacle that does most of the machine’s evil will cries out for morphing, this is remarkably prescient in its tackling of issues the cinema is only now catching up with, and Christie adds depth to the lady-in-peril heroine. Well worth reassessment.

Pelham One was first class. Pelham Two stuck to the schedule. Pelham Three needs a bus pass.

Carnivorous lunar activities rarely come any more entertaining than this.

Some Host or DASHCAM fans might be disappointed that Rob Savage has opted for something ostensibly more conventional — but The Boogeyman shows he can also make an involving, ungimmicky ghost story with perfectly constructed menace and mayhem.

Superb supporting performances from Polley and Baulk go some way to making up for our hero's lesser qualities.

A rough, exhausting, exhilarating action picture with a payoff which would have delighted Sam Fuller or Howard Hawks. The Stath - an actual Olympian, remember - is on top form.

Odd, but intriguing.

Probably the best Western since "Unforgiven."

Surprisingly, even after waiting 20 years, they managed to turn out a smart, darkly-comic thriller with some imaginative twists.

Some will find this impenetrable and irritating, but audiences willing to tune into Hosking’s off-kilter style will be moved by the ridiculous love stories and relish the hilarious eccentricity.

A few memorable scenes but this doesn't keep up the pace or plausability sufficiently.

Entrapment ambles lazily through its set-up and features only one (admittedly impressive) stretch of white-knuckle daredevilry as our heroes dangle off the tallest building in the world (which is in Kuala Lumpur, incidentally).

Hill remains a master of action pieces and is even director enough to get strong performances from his bunch of dressed-up pop stars. But this supposed sure-fire thriller, from a script that was called The Looters until the L.A. riots got in the way, fizzles like a Molotov cocktail with a soggy fuse.

It’s uncomfortably the work of someone who thinks mass murder is cool and has no feeling for regular humans.

Although downbeat, this celebration of the US military is done so expertly you forget that at the time it is set Coppola's idea of a great film was You're A Big Boy Now.

A monumentally misconceived sequel, Escape from L. A. is the huge, shonky blemish on the magnificent history of John Carpenter and Kurt Russell.

Of course, this is a film you have to meet half-way. If you’re willing to enter its world, it’s an immensely rewarding, amusing, wise, melancholy and involving experience.

While still a lurid sequel to a ropey slasher movie, Orphan: First Kill is refreshingly clever, unpredictable and gruesome. Isabelle Fuhrman’s Esther deserves three more sequels and a ‘Versus’ movie with the Stepfather or Chucky.

The major fault in Exorcist III is the house-of-cards plot that is constantly collapsing.

Superbly adapted with blistering performances from Taylor and Hepburn.

William Eubank continues to work his particular mind-stretching mix of acute character interplay and cosmic conceptual breakthrough.

It must be hard for actresses as unconventional and gutsy as Weaver and Hunter to find scripts worth making. Although this offers them both meaty parts with plentiful neuroses and snappy lines, it is otherwise a completely mechanical load of old cods.

A well-put together team performance, with enough in-jokes and self-effacement to steer clear of any detours into bad taste.

Red Dawn is at once a mainstream shoot ‘em up action picture and an ideologically demented exercise in American paranoia.

Derrickson bounces back from his insipid redo of "The Day The Earth Stood Still" with an effective chiller that's got a skeleton or two in its closet.

Fans can console themselves with some disorientating creepiness as half-glimpsed monsters swarm and the fine melodramatic performances. But as the film descends into a babbling wreck you start to wonder whatever became of the directing talent that gave us Dark Star, Assault On Precinct 13, Halloween and The Thing.

That this is just about passable as a divorced parent’s weekend treat is down to Roberts’ charm and the timeless appeal of Nancy herself.

However, as with Dead Ringers, Cronenberg approaches a touchy concept with a mixture of icy tact and cinematic daring, always informing the wilfully perverse material with a penetrating intelligence and (almost subliminally) very black wit.

The only film you’ll see this year with a limbless torso playing drums with animated entrails, this wickedly witty take on the seamy side of creative ambition is well worth a spin.

Remember the film you hoped "Snakes On A Plane" would be – this is it! By any sane cinematic standards, meretricious trash … but thrown at you with such good-humoured glee that it's hard to resist. It's a bumper-sticker of a movie: honk if you love tits and gore! Honk honk honk.

Despite the pleasant feel and fun performance from Zane there's something missing from this superhero adventure.

While not to everyone's tastes, this is without doubt one of the most exhilarating films of 1994.

A few too-broad gags aside — and even these are in the funky spirit of ’60s Marvel — this is a satisfying second issue with thrills, heartbreak, gasps, and a perfectly judged slingshot ending.

More style than substance here but what style it is and what little gems of cinematic moments collect together in this enjoyable ensemble.

A dark action-comedy rather than a spooky gothic picture, Renfield is pitched to please long-time Dracula fans while reminding new generations that this Count was the first and arguably best monster villain in Hollywood horror history.

A mysterious and disorientating blend of giallo violence, cinematic experimentation and Lynchian psychohorror. Revel in its bonkers beauty.

Just the right recipe for a seasonal horror cocktail — gruesome kills, proper suspense, sly wit, likeable leads and a dose of just deserts for very, very bad boys and girls.

Mad Max 2 with Thought for the Day thrown in. There’s some ace post-holocaust action, but you can’t help feel you were invited to a party with fizzy pop and cream cake and got suckered into a sermon instead.

A curiously compulsive drama that for all its inevitable Dead Sailors’ Society trappings is still highly entertaining.

It falters a little in its confusing climactic battle, but is breathlessly paced, wittily scripted, amusingly played, action-packed and relentlessly spooky.

Not all the plot developments ring true, but moments carry a real chill - even in a coma, McKellen can terrify a fellow patient almost to death - and it has more than enough thought-provoking material to command your interest.